Thursday, 17 August 2017

Is
Madras the cultural capital of India? Some people seem to think so. Given the film
industry of Kodambakkam and Vadapalani, the Tamil publishing industry, the December
music season, and recently the Madras week celebrations, besides institutions like
the museums, the Government College of Fine Arts, Kalakshetra, it seems a
fitting epithet. A sorely missing aspect is popular science programs. Which is
ridiculous for a city that boasted of mathematician Ramanujan, and physics
Nobelist S Chandrasekhar.

We have
had famous scientists and mathematicians speak in Madras in recent years – Bharat
Ratna CNR Rao and ISRO chief Kiran Kumar at IIT Madras, Fields Medalist Manjul Bhargava at KSRI, astronomer Jayant Narlikar, microbiologist Chakraborty, mathematicians
Roddam Narasimha, Bruce Berndt, Eric Lander, Krishnaswami Alladi, Ajit Varki, neurologist
Vilayanur Ramachandran, at several fora. MatScience has started an annualprogram, KV Sarma Foundation hosts an annual lecture and other institutions
conduct programs. But these usually cater to experts, rarely to the general
public.

Some of
us felt that we need a forum for lectures addressed to the general public. A
forum that hosts monthly lectures, where people can meet regularly and develop
fellowship and a community. So we have started the Varahamihira Science Forum(this is our Facebook page). The
speakers need not be professionals in their field, though we would be delighted
to have them lecture. Anyone who can tell a great story, with all the drama and
suspense and humour and obstacles and puzzles that science demands and boasts
of, is an ideal speaker.

The
first lecture will be on Sunday 20 August 2017, from 4pm to 5.30pm. I will
deliver a lecture on Antoine Lavoisier
and the Origin of Modern Chemisty. The venue is Wandering Artist, 51, 6th
Main Road, RA Puram, Chennai. There will be an entrance fee of Rs.100/- per
person. This is merely to cover costs like hall rent. We intend to run this
forum as a non-profit organization. There is not even an organization, just a
bunch of friends volunteering to get something going, along the lines of the
Tamil Heritage Trust.

We hope
we can have a series of monthly lectures, and that it inspires similar fora
across the city and the state. We also hope we can form a community and launch
other activities.

Friday, 4 August 2017

In the ninth century, most of today’s Karnataka was ruled by
a king of the Rashtrakuta dynasty called Amogavarsha Nrpatunga. One of his
inscriptions say his kingdom extended from the Godavari to the Kaveri, so his
terrirtory was not confined to modern Karnataka.This king was also a very
special scholar – he composed the oldest surviving great literature in the
Kannada language, Kavirajamarga. In his court lived a great mathematician,
Mahavira, who composed a book titled GanitaSaraSangraha. This is as
remarkable as Kavirajamarga, because this is oldest book in Sanskrit,exclusively
dealing with mathematics. Hundreds of books in were composed in previous
centuries in Sanskrit, including the famous book of Apastambha, Baudhayana, Aryabhata,
VarahaMihira and Brahmagupta. But those books were either sulba sutras or
jyotisha sutras, and mathmatics was one of the components of those books.
GanitaSaaraSangraha is the first book where mathematics is the primary subject.
Several later astronomers like Madhava, Parameshvara, Bhaskara and Nilakanta
Somayyaji wrote later books on Astronomy, which had chapters on Mathematics, so
the older practice did not fade out.

Prof Rangacharya of Presidency College, Madras translated GanitaSaraSangraha
into English in 1912. The book was translated first into Telugu by Pavuluri
Mallana, in the eleventh century and most recently in 2000, to Kannada by ProfPadmavathamma, of the University of Mysore. To my knowledge, there is no Tamil
translation, except perhaps my own translation of a mere three stanzas.

Mahavira, was a Jain. The first stanza of the GanitaSaraSangraha
has the phrase namastasmai jInendrAya mahAvirAyaनमस्तसमै जिनेन्द्राय
महावीराय (Salutations to Jinendra Mahavira), a reference to the last
Jain tirthankara, Vardhamana Mahavira. Interestingly, in their first slokas the
Hindu astronomers Aryabhata salutes Brahma, Brahmagupta salutes Siva, and
Nilakanta Somayyaji salutes Vishnu. An interesting comparison may also be made to the famous
Meguti inscription of Chalukya king Pulikesi in Aihole, which begins with a
similar salutation to Jinendra (Jayati Bhagavaan JinendraHजयति
भगवान् जिनेन्द्रः)

This is the other remarkable aspect, because the book is in
Sanskrit, not Prakrit. Popular belief is that most works by Jains and Buddhists
were written in Prakrits (Jain works in Ardha Magadhi, and Buddhist works in
Pali). While this is true of several Jain and Buddhist compositions of the
first few hundred years, not just for philosophy or religion, but also for sciences,
later Buddhists and Jains wrote in Sanskrit, which became the lingua franca not
just for people who followed the Vedic religion, but also for the sciences and
the arts. This is an extensive topic, which is not well-known to learned
Indians, and I wont discuss it here. But this is very similar to how Latin was
used in Europe, after the fifteenth century, not just as the language of the Christian
clergy, but also of science and arts. Hence, Linnaeus developed Latin
nomenclature for naming plants and animals by genus-species, Newton wrote his
book book on physics Principia
Mathematica de Naturalis in Latin, chemists from Lavoisier onwards, used
Latin words to name most of the elements. And since the laws of Europe use
Roman law to guide them, which thence guide the Constitution and laws of former
European colonies like India, Pakistan, USA, Australia, most of Africa and the
Americas, Latin is the primary language of global law, except in Islamic
countries and China.

But in this blog, I wont discuss the new mathematical
concepts expounded by Mahavira, but merely quote three stanzas of his poem,
which I believe should be declared the Anthem of Mathematics, and included in
every mathematics school text book, not just in India, but in every culture
broadminded enough to enjoy and agree with this poem. Here is the Sanskrit
source and my English translation. My Tamil translation is here.